by Joan Hess
My thoughts were going nowhere when Samuel Berry and Buffy Franz asked if they could join me. Having no plausible reason to say no, I gestured at the empty chairs. Samuel ordered drinks from the waiter, then rocked back and closed his eyes. He’d trimmed his beard, I noticed, but he was still scruffy enough to earn a few curious glances from other customers.
“I am so glad we spotted you,” Buffy said, who was a paragon of perfection from her moussed blond hair to her designer sandals, “because I just don’t know what to do. We’re going on this same cruise tomorrow, just so Sammie can prowl around a bunch of old ruins. I have no idea what to take. I’ve been on cruise ships where you have to look sensational every night at dinner, and I’ve been on the ones where people wear robes over bathing suits. I just hate not being dressed appropriately, don’t you?”
“Oh yes,” I said. “I lie awake nights worrying about it. I was told this was casual. I’m taking a dress and a sweater, along with clothes for the excursions.”
“I don’t have any of my good jewelry. The few pieces Daddy let me bring are in Rome with the rest of my luggage. It never occurred to me I might go on a cruise.”
“Then don’t,” Samuel said, his eyes still closed.
She swatted at him. “And do what—sit around the hotel? Hey, maybe there’s a hot bingo game somewhere in town. Now that’d be exciting …”
He grinned. “Sittermann will be delighted to escort you.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” Her lips pursed as she toyed with her napkin. “He’s creepy, but he’s rich. And Alexander Bledrock—one day he’ll be a baron. That is so cool. Maybe I’ll persuade one of them to take me to Cairo to see the pyramids in the moonlight. Daddy must know somebody who knows somebody at the American Embassy. We might just drop in for dinner.”
“Sounds like a blast.”
She gave him a dark look. “And then I’ll fly back to Rome. You can go by yourself to all those litter boxes that you call oases.”
I thought it sounded like an excellent idea, and I expected Samuel to concur. Therefore, I was surprised when he reached across the table to stroke her cheek and said, “Aw, baby, I was teasing. I don’t want you to leave. The oases may have been crude, but we certainly managed to have some fun in the sleeping bag, didn’t we? Remember that night when we went out into the desert and …” He glanced at me, then gazed intently at her. “Please don’t go back to Rome. You’ll have a great time on the cruise, especially since you’ll have people to hang out with. You and Mrs. Malloy can lie on the top deck all day, while a waiter brings you fancy drinks. Maybe there’ll be a hot tub. We’ll sneak up there at midnight and lie naked in the steamy water. Antony and Cleopatra, under a sparkling canopy of stars. That ought to make a good story when you get back home.”
Buffy ate one of the cakes while she pondered all this. To my dismay, instead of opting for the Cairo-Rome scenario, she said, “Well, I do like cruises.”
Had she but known.
We drove to Aswan in a military convoy, which I found unnerving. As Caron pointed out numerous times, it was a peculiar way to protect tourists, since we made a convenient, economical target, should anyone be inclined to plant a few roadside bombs or land mines. As we drove through uniformly brown, dusty towns, the soldiers began to peel away in their jeeps and trucks, until we were under the protection of two camo-clad youngsters who might have been recruited that morning.
We boarded the Nubian Queen at a dock near the dam. Peter and I had a nondescript cabin down the hall from the admittedly spectacular lounge, replete with a dozen sitting areas, columns, large windows, and a curved mahogany bar beneath a stained-glass window. I could not help thinking about Alexander’s remarks as Peter and I unpacked, then went to the lounge.
The cruise director, a pleasant Egyptian gentleman with impeccable English, came by to apologize for the suite having already been booked. We assured him that our cabin was satisfactory. Some of the other eighty or so passengers nodded politely as they found seats and ordered drinks. From remarks I could overhear, I concluded that they were primarily German and British, with a sprinkling of Americans. The only Arabs I saw were wearing stiff white jackets and fetching drinks from the bar for the infidels. After a few minutes, Caron and Inez joined us. We were sipping a bon voyage toast when Samuel and Buffy sat down.
“Very impressive engineering,” Samuel commented as the ship began to move away from the dock, giving us a view of the dam. “When Nasser decided to have it built, it resulted in an international uproar involving the Suez Canal. The UN had to intervene. It took thirty-five thousand workers to build it, and over four hundred and fifty of them died during the construction. Not, I suppose, that Nasser and the financiers noticed. The deaths of working-class people scarcely matter when unemployment is high and labor is cheap.”
“Our cabin is itsy-bitsy,” Buffy said, “and I don’t see how two people can fit on the balcony.” She looked at Caron and Inez, both of whom were attempting to disguise themselves as brocade armchairs. “There’s absolutely no shelf space in the bathroom for hair and skin products, is there? I don’t know how I’m going to survive.”
Inez made an attempt to divert her by reeling off the number of cubic meters of concrete required to construct Aswan Dam, but Buffy refused to fall for it.
“Did you see the prices in the gift shop?” She allowed Samuel to hand her a glass of champagne. “They claim it’s all Nubian craftsmanship, but I bet there are ‘made in China’ labels in the wastebasket. What about entertainment on board? No casino, no stage—and no hot tub on the top deck. I asked. What are we supposed to do at night?”
“On two nights, native musicians and dancers come on board,” Peter said. “You’ll be tired after visiting the tombs and temples. They require stairs and a lot of walking.”
Buffy’s brow creased. “I don’t know about that. I need to do some serious work on my tan lines. Do you think there are decent deck chairs somewhere?”
“You bet your well-shaped fanny there are!” boomed a familiar voice that made my stomach churn.
I gazed with dismay as Sittermann dragged over a chair and sat down. “I didn’t realize you were coming,” I managed to say. Beside me, Peter sighed. Caron and Inez looked as if they were about to verbalize their displeasure, so I quickly added, “We didn’t see you in the convoy.”
He propped his feet on the edge of the table, giving all of us an unwanted view of his hairy legs and knobby ankles. “No, I flew down to Aswan this morning. Who’s ready for another drink?” He held up a hand and snapped his fingers. “That drive must have left you all drier than a bleached skull of a steer that wandered off from the herd. Back home, I’ve got a collection of them nailed up on the rec room walls. Some of my guests say they feel like they’re being watched. Ain’t that a hoot and a holler!”
“Definitely,” Peter said.
“And so tasteful,” I murmured.
Caron rolled her eyes. “Like we give a hoot.”
“You folks going ashore after lunch to visit Kalabsha Temple?” Sittermann went on, clearly oblivious to anything short of a volcanic eruption. “I hear tell it’s nothing as fancy as Karnak, just another jumble of rocks. I was thinking I might skip it and see if I can get up a little poker game. Anybody in the mood for five-card stud?”
Samuel stiffened. “The Temple of Kalabsha was built by Augustus Caesar between 30 B.C. and A.D. 14 and dedicated to a composite of Nubian and Egyptian gods. The Rock Temple of Beit al-Wali has several fine reliefs detailing the pharaoh’s gory victory over the Nubians. The Temple of Kertassi is Graeco-Roman and has two impressive Hathor-headed columns, as well as some prehistoric carvings and paintings.”
“Samuel, have you met Inez?” asked Caron. “You two must have been joined at the hippocampus in a previous life.”
“Is that supposed to be funny?” Inez demanded.
Samuel mumbled something and headed for the staircase that led to the upper deck. After a moment, the girls announced that
they wanted some fresh air and went outside to the narrow walkway along the side of the ship.
I grabbed Peter’s wrist before he could follow them, thereby abandoning me to the company of Buffy and Sittermann. Sitting in the bottom of Magritta’s excavation would have been preferable—or in a portable toilet on a busy street or even in a dentist’s deceptively benign recliner. “Oh, dear,” I said to Peter, quivering delicately, “I do believe that the drive has left me a little queasy. Would you mind if we go to our cabin so I can lie down for a few minutes?”
“Not at all,” my husband said with alacrity. “You’re looking pale.” He stood up and yanked me to my feet. “You must excuse my wife. You wouldn’t think someone who’s seen more corpses than a coroner would be quite so frail, but she is. I’ve tried to keep her away from the martinis while we’re here, but she gulps them down every time I leave her alone for more than a few minutes. She’s been in rehab so many times that they’ve named a detox ward after her, and—”
“Thank you so very much for your candor,” I said icily. “I’m going to our cabin. Please feel free to stay here for another hour or two and share more of your concerns with all these lovely people in the lounge. You do seem to have engaged their curiosity.”
He caught up with me as I stomped down the corridor. “I was trying to help. This way, you have an excuse to go hide whenever Sittermann gets too close.”
“Rehab? Detox?”
“I had to make it sound convincing, didn’t I?”
“No.” I did not look back at him.
In the cabin, we agreed to a tentative truce. I decided to pass up both lunch and the outing. Peter said he’d find the girls and accompany them, allowing me to savor a much-deserved afternoon of solitude on the balcony. An hour later I watched the launches as they moved toward shore, noting without much interest that although Samuel was among the disembarking passengers, Buffy and Sittermann were not. The latter struck me as a card shark, but I had a feeling the former knew when to hold ’em.
After a buffet dinner on the upper deck, Peter and I returned to our cabin. He’d arranged for a bottle of wine to be delivered. We went out to the balcony, which was no longer than six feet and only a few feet wide, and sat down on metal chairs to ponder the darkly silhouetted mountains rising from the placid water. No lights twinkled along the distant shore. The engines of the ship hummed, and voices from the upper deck mingled with music from the lounge.
I slipped my hand in Peter’s. “Is there any hope you’ll tell me what’s going on?”
“We had an agreement,” he began, then stopped to take a deep breath and exhale in a frustrated whoosh. “No, there isn’t any hope because we don’t really know what’s going on, if anything. We have no concrete evidence. There’s a vague ambiance of unease in Luxor. Mahmoud’s usual sources have either refused to talk or abruptly disappeared. The people in Cairo have been hearing rumors about activity involving El Asad li-allah.” He squeezed my hand before I could interrupt. “No, nothing suggesting that they’re going to attack tourists or bomb hotels. El Asad himself is purported to be in the Luxor area, but that’s speculation at best.”
“Himself? It couldn’t be a woman?”
“Not in an extremist Muslim cult. These are the guys who think women should stay home and obey the males in the family, and believe their mission is to replace secularism with their interpretation of the Koran. Like the radical faction of any religion, they’re easily swayed by charismatic leaders who are adept at editing and citing out of context. This particular group has neither the funds nor the membership to act in the immediate future.”
I thought about this for a moment. “The uneasiness must be contagious. I certainly have been getting a lot of veiled warnings not to meddle. I don’t understand why anybody thinks I would. It’s not as though I’ve been asking everybody about his politics or depth of religious fervor. Perhaps I should be flattered that I have such an international reputation for intuitive brilliance.”
He chuckled in a dismissive, and therefore annoying, way. “This time it’s not about you, Claire. Not everyone believes I’m a businessman looking at a potential real estate investment. I’m sure my trips to the police department have been noted by interested parties. You’re merely my wife.”
“Merely your wife?” I sputtered. My hand shook as I refilled my wineglass. A month ago, reciting marriage vows in Jorgeson’s backyard, I’d had hopes that Peter would finally begin to appreciate my keen observational prowess and attention to detail, no matter how trifling. At that moment, I would have happily aligned myself with Nekhbet, the vulture goddess of the Upper Nile. “Would you prefer that I hand over my dowry and learn to crochet? As soon as we get home, I’ll invite your captain’s wife over for lunch and we’ll start planning the Christmas party at the PD. Jorgeson will make an excellent Santa. After that, I can join the arts center ladies’ auxiliary and help with the spring fashion show at the country club. That is what wives do, isn’t it?”
“And learn to cook a decent rice pilaf.”
“Your mother doesn’t know how to boil water. If she wants to serve rice pilaf, she hires Uncle Ben to come over and cook it himself.”
“He’s retired.”
I stood up. “I believe I’ll retire as well, at least for the night.”
Peter cut me off at the door. After he’d made his mute apologies on the balcony and in the cabin on the bed, utilizing the full range of his amazing amatory talents, we agreed that it might be nice to go to the lounge and have brandy while we enjoyed the Nubian musicians.
Later, when Peter and I were in bed and he was asleep, I realized that I’d learned almost nothing from our earlier conversation. Marriage had not changed his resistance to sharing information. Nor had it dampened my inclination to investigate.
By the following day, Buffy seemed to have forgotten her vision of spending the cruise on a deck chair. After an unspeakably early breakfast, passengers were ferried in launches to a rough stone pier. At one end was a steep path lined with rocks. It looked as though pitons might be useful. Although Inez might have had some in one of her pockets, I was as ill equipped as the rest of the passengers.
Caron and Inez had escaped with an earlier group, but Buffy, Samuel, and Sittermann lingered with Peter and me until we had no choice but to go together in the last launch. After some scrambling and muted curses, we arrived at the top of the hill. There were no vendors, no cafés, no tour buses, no restroom facilities. It was the first time that we’d seen sand. As we walked up a slope, I discovered quickly that it was not my preferred surface.
“This is the unfinished Temple of Maharakka,” the cruise director said, “and dates from the Roman period. Beyond it is the Temple of Dakka, built between the second century B.C. and the first century A.D. You can climb steps cut into the wall to the roof for a view. It’s about a kilometer away from here. Should you still be in the mood, the walk to Wadi es Sebua is difficult but worthwhile. It has an alley of lion-headed sphinxes and a colossal statue of Ramses II. The launches will be waiting whenever you wish to return to the ship, but please keep in mind that we sail at noon.” He gave us a small salute and fled back to the pier.
Some of our fellow passengers were heading for the second site, while others sat in the shade, red faced and already miserable. My sympathies lay with them, but Peter slipped his arm around my waist and said, “We don’t want to embarrass the girls, do we?”
Sittermann put his hands on his hips and squinted at the ruins of the temple. “I reckon I’m game if you all are, but I have to admit all these Ramses and Amons and Tuts are beginning to sound like the refrain of a country ballad, the country being Egypt in this case. There’s no pizzazz in blocks of granite and eroded statues. In terms of marketability, I’d say what they need is—”
“Why don’t you go back to the ship?” I suggested nicely.
He took out his camera. “How about you all stand in a group so I can get a good shot? I promised the boys at the Rotary Club
back home that I’d do a slide show at our luncheon meeting next month. That ain’t to say all of the members will stay awake. Some of those ol’ boys were born about the time Ramses-the-whatever was canoodling with Nefertari.”
We did not oblige him with a photo op, but instead trudged dutifully to the temple. Samuel darted about, talking excitedly about the inscriptions. Buffy stayed near him, sneaking peeks at her watch and no doubt calculating the approach of prime tanning time. Inez, I noticed, was lecturing a group of passengers about the influence of Augustus and Tiberius.
When she at last lost her audience, she joined Peter and me in the shade of a wall. Caron appeared from wherever she’d been cowering, and we headed for the Temple of Dakka. Sittermann was taking photographs as if he was on commission for National Geographic, although his subject seemed to be backsides of increasingly stressed tourists. Buffy and Samuel were hissing at each other. Other passengers were falling by the wayside, until we numbered no more than a dozen or so. Although I was in top physical condition for a bookseller who can rip into boxes of books without raising a sweat, I was beginning to feel a certain discomfort in my calves as the sand squished underfoot.